The Runt of the Litter

Cain, Abel... and Their Little Sister?

Note: I decided to try and sleep without my meds and it went really badly so now I'm gonna go watch Rick and Morty until the sun comes up. But first! Here's a 2am chapter for old times sake 😏

Y'all are fluff starved lol so I tried so hard to do fluff for you guys this week and I'm not sure how fluffy this turned out. For some reason it was a super hard chapter to write. Lmk what you think?

Thank you so so much for all your super sweet comments the last few weeks. You guys are so amazing and kind and funny, and I hope you all know you're making the world a better place just by existing <3

Anna is fifteen.

Cain, Abel... and Their Little Sister?

Sam gazed into the still darkness of his fourth cup of coffee. He'd been up since three chugging caffeine, and he still felt drowsy and half-asleep.

Across the table from him, Anna had one earbud in, her hands wrapped warmly around her favorite coffee mug, and she was watching an animated show on her phone. She looked bored at best and miserable at worst.

Sam wished they didn't have so much shit going on. If he didn't have so much work to do today, he could've brought her somewhere and made the day count for something. He could feel Anna's childhood slipping away from them just like his and Dean's had. Like it had never been there at all. If they weren't all very careful, they would one day look up and see that she had transformed into one more world-weary Winchester adult. It was the last thing Sam wanted for her.

"What?" Anna asked bluntly.

Sam raised his eyebrows in question.

"You're staring at me lookin' all... I don't know. What?"

"I'm just tired," Sam told her with an assuring nod. "I guess I'm kinda spacey, Ladybug. I'm sorry."

Anna frowned a little bit, and he could see the gears in her head starting to turn. When she turned her eyes back down to her phone, it was clear that her attention didn't move with them. She kept sighing, and she was scritching her nails against the outside of her coffee cup anxiously.

Sam tried to shift his own attention back to the old tome in front of him, but it was hard work. He was making no leeway despite the countless hours of research, and there was a familiar hint of hopelessness working its way into his midbrain. But this was important, and whether it felt worth it or not– that didn't matter. The only chance they had of getting the Mark off Dean's arm was in scouring every resource they had until they found the tiniest hint of a solution. Painstaking as this plan was, it was all they had.

"You want more coffee?" Anna offered.

Sam looked up from the page he was skimming and saw Anna reaching a hand out for his cup. "Sure," he said.

As he passed her his cup– about a third full of cold coffee– his eyes lingered on hers. She looked exhausted– bags under her bloodshot eyes and half-mast eyelids that seemed incapable of making the climb to finish opening.

"You okay?" he asked.

Anna appeared startled by the question. She straightened her spine a little bit and shoved a handful of curly hair out of her face. "Yeah," she said. "You?"

"Yeah," Sam said, confused. "How'd you sleep last night?"

Anna shrugged and turned her back to him so she could fill their coffee cups. He thought maybe she would give him a more substantial answer eventually, but Anna didn't say anything else.

"Still having nightmares?" he pushed, trying to be careful.

Anna was quick to shutdown. But if you approached her in just the right way, she would give you at least a small glimpse into what was going on inside her head.